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Saturday, June 29, 2013

without a trace.

Colorado's Weminuche Wilderness

Recently I voted in a one-question
online survey for a chance to win a pair of sunglasses. The question
was: Do You Leave No Trace?

I really wanted to win the sunglasses,
so I checked the box marked "Yes, mostly." I mean, I
consider that a fairly accurate response, but I also thought that if I was
more truthful and checked ones of the boxes marked "Um, I take a
rock every now and then," or "Don't camp within 200 feet of
water? Really?", I might jeopardize my chances of winning the
sunglasses. And did I mention the sunglasses were really sweet?

The author of the survey, who comes
across as a strong Leave No Trace proponent, wrote that "LNT has
done a fantastic job of getting the message out, and, incredibly,
without coming across like a nag. Too many wilderness proponents are
shrill, annoying, and self-righteous... but Leave No Trace principles
are clearly grounded in our own best self-interest. And they aren’t
so difficult to follow.

"But," he concluded, as if
with one eyebrow raised, staring right at me, "Do you?"

LNT as a concept is easy enough, but
the seven LNT principles (memorized by anyone who wants a wilderness
job) are pretty rigid. I clearly remember my first night camping on
the Middle Fork of the Salmon River (a Wild and Scenic River as
revered as the holy grail) and asking my group innocently if I should
toss the stubby carrot-ends from our dinner into the churning, silty
river.

My friend Chris looked at me aghast.
"Do you know,"
he asked, his voice dripping
with italics, "where we ARE?"

Fair enough. But
fair, too, that the sediment in the river would likely have ground those
three carrot stubs into shreds that soon would have joined the bits
of leaves and other biomass in that turbulent, dynamic ecosystem.

There are diehard
LNT proponents (like my friend Chris) who will never build a fire in
the backcountry, who eat their apple cores, wipe their ass with
pinecones, and practice the endearing habit known as self-sumping:
wherein, after cooking and eating a meal, one sloshes an inch of
precious water into the pot, uses one's grubby fingers to scrub off
all remaining grease, bits of food, burned tidbits, etc., then drinks
the resulting dirty dishwater to avoid leaving any bits of food
behind. Though self-sumping was born in environments where water is
precious or food smells might attract grizzlies, it's now practiced
nonchalantly even in environments where it's completely unnecessary.
Some people actually claim to enjoy the taste of dirty dishwater.

The alternative to
self-sumping is to dig a hole far from where you'll be sleeping,
place a piece of mesh or a hash of twigs over it, pour the dishwater
into the hole, fling the bits of food caught in your sieve into a
trash bag, then cover the hole. Is this a pain in the ass? Maybe. If
you're not in bear country, can you simply fling the water into the
bushes? I say, why not?

In parts of Alaska,
Leave No Trace is almost laughable. There are places so rarely
visited by humans, where the land is so fecund and so resilient that
it erodes, eats up, grows over, and washes away any prints left by a
lonely camper within a matter of days. There are places where the
rivers are so enormous and silty and filled with hungry organisms
that they immediately devour last night's leftover spaghetti. Should
campers in such places be ashamed into not carrying out a rock as a
memento when miners a few hundred miles away are blasting into
watersheds with TNT?

I believe that
Leave No Trace is a worthy principle to teach anyone new to
backcountry travel, or anyone who believes that burying toilet paper
or tossing orange peels off the trail are acceptable practices. But
after a while, you (hopefully) learn that LNT is just that: a
principle, not a set of unbendable rules. Obviously, respecting fire
bans and leaving cultural artifacts are important, but there's a lot
to be said for having a campfire: not only when it's necessary for
warmth or to dry out, but to help ensure that kids or even wilderness
newbies have a positive experience in a place that can otherwise be
cold and scary. There's a lot to be said for being hands-on: for
picking flowers and edible plants, for catching frogs, for being the
kind of kid who has a rock collection. There's a lot to be said for
leaving the hard-packed trail behind and venturing into the unknown.

There are places to
rejoice in these small vagrancies, and places not to. It's more
important to practice LNT on highly used lands that receive a lot of
impact, or in sensitive environments like alpine or desert areas. And
while I often walk off trail, choose a waterfront camp or take home a
porcupine quill, I always pick up others' trash and carry out my own.
It's all a matter of judgement.

For information's sake, the seven
Leave No Trace principles:

Plan ahead and prepareTravel and
camp on durable surfacesDispose of waste properlyLeave what
you findMinimize campfire impactsRespect wildlifeBe
considerate of other visitors

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About Me

I'm Krista. I write stories about the intersection of people, places and nature. Formally, I'm a contributor at High Country News, a non-profit environmental news magazine once called "a scrappy institution that produces some of the finest journalism in the American West." My work has also been published in Slate, Orion, Alaska magazine, New Zealand Wilderness magazine, the Denver Post, Adventure Journal, and a number of other newspapers and websites. See more at www.kristaleelanglois.com.